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July 20, 2011

to a liberal society through the reverse direction

In my previous post, i mentioned about my wish to live in a more liberal society. Perhaps I should reprhase it as "open minded society" because when I actually think about it, I am living in a liberal society eventhough it doesn't look so at the first sight.

This statement is particularly true for big cities who suffers from migration, but not villages, towns or even relatively small cities. But if you are living in a city as crowded and chaotic as Istanbul, you will amazed how liberal this city may be - yet again, not in the first sense you would think of.

It is all based on the balance of power, or rather, lack of it. We are not really a open minded society, we just have to admit it, and even those of us who seem like more open minded than the rest of us can hit to their walls much earlier than you might expect. What's more, those walls don't usually confine the owner itself, and they attempt to confine other people too, when ever possible. However, nobody really has the power to achieve it.

Sultanbeyli, one of the most crowded urban areas in Istanbul

This may not seem like a bad thing in the beginning. And for a lot of reasons, it is indeed better that people don't have enough power to intervene other people rather than they have it. Unfortunately though, this does not necessarily lead us to a more liberal society that I long for. Rather, it leads us to chaos.

I specified "big cities such as Istanbul" for a reason. These cities are suffering from a ruthless migration. Now hold on, I am not suddenly going to become the next fascist asshole who tries to get rid of aliens in hometown. Nope, that's not it. But you just have to see that these people are coming from villages or towns, or even smaller cities in which not-open-minded societes have an oppressing effect on them. And when they come to a big city where things already seem like chaotic, they get this impression that they are free to do everything they want because there will be nobody to stop them. And there will indeed be nobody to stop them. Because nobody wants to get into trouble, especially when they know that it might be extremely hard to get out of that trouble, if they can ever. Because from an indiviual point of view, we are all powerless.

I am not saying that everybody suddenly becomes uncontrollable. But from a sociological point of view, only 5% of a society sharing a same pattern of habbits can easily dominate the rest, especially if the rest 95% prefers not to get involved. And you can bet that, we overreached that 5% barrier long time ago.

So in a way, we are indeed a liberal society, because if you want to do anything, it is very unlikely that there will be anybody on your way. But is highly questionable if this is the right directon to achieve that liberalism.